I’m serious, it seems the desire for unconditional love is everywhere. It features in thousands of quotes on the Internet and it is a key part in many wedding vows.
But who are they kidding? Unconditional? I can think of plenty of conditions that are attached to most people’s love; conditions that, when broken, can take a little piece of that love with them. Here’s a big one: do not cheat! And that list goes on right down to the nitty-gritty of daily routines. We even have unspoken conditions of how the other person should react in any given situation, based on what we want, our past experiences, and our expectations.
I’m not going to list the “top ten conditions that most men would like their partner to live by” or do the same for women. Because guess what?
The number one complaint females have when it comes to couples therapy is that their partner does not understand them. And, yes, you guessed it…the number one complaint males have is that their partner does not understand them. Exactly the same. That’s a little off topic, but I thought it was interesting and thought provoking
Back to loving completely and unconditionally.
To love in this way would mean your love would encompass everything, be given freely and at all times regardless of your own emotions that day, and with no bearing on what was returned to you. Consider all the flaws, problems, and bad past experiences that come with any partner and are a natural part of any relationship – to love unconditionally would be to love these as well. Even if they no longer loved you back. Even if they had an affair.
Yes; to love unconditionally would be to continue loving them wholeheartedly after they had done you wrong. In my mind, that’s one of those times where you’d hear that classic TV phrase “I love you, I just can’t be in love with you” – but true unconditional love would not place those constraints. So when you took your wedding vows did you really mean you would love with absolutely no conditions?
It’s a dream, it is one of those hopeful scenarios that everybody wishes they could end up in, like some kind of romance novel or film with endless blissful sunsets and walks along the beach. Well it’s not my dream. Me getting stuck on the beach doesn’t give a blissful romantic scene. Entertaining, absolutely, but hardly blissful.
As I became more spiritual and started living in the moment rather than constantly planning or worrying about the future and learned from the past, I started to be able to truly leave the past behind. This gives the ability to only see what’s important in any given moment. Without going into detail, it’s as if nothing else exists. The past is just a memory and the future is yet unwritten.
So, given that view, in any particular moment do we have the capability to love in such a way that has no judgement or conditions attached? Is that kind of unconditional love a possibility, is it something worth striving for?
I believe so. I think any moment that enables you to feel so safe and secure that you could open your heart to everything and everyone to such a degree that nothing could hurt you… That is what I imagine to be unconditional love.
The emotional turmoil and pain we all feel is manifested in our heads. It is our way of conditioning ourselves to handle more pain. The irony or paradox is that the driving force to prevent that pain inadvertently creates more, and prevents us from gaining a higher love that we wouldn’t ever need to be protected from.
We love from the ground up. Imagine you are sat in a meditation pose; the first level of love would be between our legs. That’s not by chance; that’s reality for most people, lust and love coincide. It gives us an immense amount of pleasure and is the basic building block of reproduction and survival.
We are talking about loving unconditionally, and to do that we need to move where we love from; or perhaps not so much move, but expand to include the many other parts that are capable of loving. Each part loves in a different way. And each higher level of love will break down the barriers of fear and judgement which both lead to adding conditions to any relationship.
To love in this way requires a complete let-go of any rules and conditions that you have built up over the years. All those walls and barriers to prevent pain need to be washed away, never to return, no matter what happens. Then, and only after many years of practice and mental discipline to focus where your love comes from, and how it interacts with the love that is in everything and everywhere arising in every moment, will you be able to feel such love.
We all need to close our eyes, silence our thoughts and open our hearts; if you can do this, then you will know unconditional love is possible.
